February 18, 2007

Looking for a Good Mystery or Thriller?

The weather we’re having here in New Jersey makes a lot of people want to stay home with a good mystery, or possibly murder someone. Did you read that, over in New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg had to apologize to all the residents whose cars got tickets because the city snow-removal crews plowed them in?

I review relatively few mysteries and thrillers on this site, partly because I have trouble keeping up with their authors. To give you an idea of my progress: The last Sue Grafton novel I read was B Is for Burglar. And whenever I try to catch up, I seem to end up slogging through a book like Thomas Harris’s recent thriller, Hannibal Rising, which Entertainment Weeklywww.ew.com rightly named one of the five worst books of 2006.

But Bill Peschel over at Reader’s Almanac specializes in mysteries and thrillers and has an archive of reviews of these, alphabetically arranged by author and title, on his site. So check out his blog www.planetpeshel.com when you’re in the mood for crime. His recent recommendations include Giles Blunt’s By the Time You Read This (Holt, $19.95), the latest novel about Ontario detective John Cardinal. Blunt won Britain’s Silver Dagger and Canada’s Arthur Ellis award.

As for me, I hope to weigh in soon on Alexander McCall Smith’s Isabel Dalhousie mystery, The Right Attitude to Rain (Pantheon, $21.95). If you’ve read this one, please tell me it’s going to be better than Harris’s book.

(c) 2007 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.

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It’s not exactly a traditional mystery/thriller…but it sure did chill me to the bone, and was a perfect read during the ice storm in South Jersey this past week….I highly recommend Patrick McCabe’s new novel, “Winterwood.”

Thanks for the suggestion. I did some of my happiest reading in a hammock at my family’s summer place in the Pine Barrens in South Jersey, when the area was much less developed than it is today. Bet the ice storm was even worse in that area than it was up here in the north …

My pleasure, Bill. I’m writing the “scrotum” review now. I normally do children’s books on Saturday, and was going to do “The Higher Power of Lucky” later in the week. But the Times said that libraries are banning this book, which seems to call for an immediate comment.